


Racial Tension

by WinchesterWarrenSon



Series: The Ox Syndicate [5]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Yakuza, M/M, Racism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 04:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5234141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinchesterWarrenSon/pseuds/WinchesterWarrenSon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The racial make-up of the Yakuza has certainly changed since Gyumao The Ox King took over or eliminated all of the major syndicates in the area, but that hasn't changed the fact that Piccolo is the only Latino among an almost all-Asian criminal organization. That, in addition to the nature of Piccolo's recruitment, makes him "suspicious" to the others. It causes problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Racial Tension

**Author's Note:**

> The difference of the / and the & in the relationship tags is that / is signifying a romantic and/or sexual relationship while the & is signifying a strictly platonic relationship. In case you haven't read the previous stories, Piccolo's ethnicity in this story is Mexican. Tenshinhan is Chinese, as is Chichi. Goku is Filipino (along with Vegeta), and Yamcha is half-Malaysian, half-Afghan. This makes Gohan half Filipino and half Chinese. I do have to go back and edit the fic where I share their ethnicities just a bit because I've changed my mind on a couple of them, but I really like the majority of what I picked out for everybody. It's kind of turning into an AU where the Dragon Ball world is the US but if Eastern countries has colonized the New World instead, but I'm not sure if that's really what I want to do.

Yamcha would not have ordinarily thought of himself as racist. He had always been more preoccupied with other, more life-threatening concerns, like his impending starvation or getting shot at. It wasn't that he was blind to the existence of racism or that he thought it didn't affect his or others' lives. And it wasn't that he thought racism couldn't be life-threatening. He had heard horror stories from long ago. And he had experienced some racism directed at himself in the past, what with being biracial. 

But most of the prejudice he experienced had been the nature of Islamophobia and classism. No one had wanted an Islamic homeless boy hanging around their food stands or so much as standing too close to them. 

But Yamcha had the horrible feeling that the gut reaction he had when he first heard Goku's son speaking in Spanish with the boy they recruited was a lot like how people felt when they were shoving him away from the apple cart when he was a child. 

Piccolo and Gohan were carrying a whole conversation in Spanish, and Piccolo responded to something Gohan said by giving him an apple. Gohan giggled, then took a bite, then tried to talk with his mouth full. Yamcha didn't know what Piccolo was saying, but it seemed to be some kind of reprimand for talking with his mouth full. 

Yamcha just stood there in the hallway, and it took a while for Piccolo to notice, but the thirteen-year-old lifted his head up and looked at the man. 

Yamcha felt a rush of anxiety and waved a bit, so he didn't look like a creeper. 

Piccolo just turned his head and said something in Spanish to the boy and went further down the hall. 

Yamcha watched them go, but he still felt a layer of anxiety overlapping over his thoughts. 

"You think that's creepy too, right?" 

Yamcha jumped, then turned around. Tenshinhan was standing there. 

He still didn't like the Chinese man. But he felt less aggressive towards him now that he had had the opportunity to blow a bullet through his arm. While he was entirely aware that Goku was still having sex with Tenshinhan, Yamcha hadn't seen any evidence of it, and that helped him keep a cooler head around Tenshinhan. 

"What, Piccolo?" 

"He could be telling that kid anything, and we'd never know," Tenshinhan said. 

That was true.... 

"And it doesn't do well to not know what's going on around here...." 

"I don't trust him to be in charge of the boy's studies." 

"But Chichi put him in charge. We can't go against Chichi. Or Goku." 

"True, but that doesn't mean we can't keep an eye on him and prevent any kind of internal rebellion he might cause." 

Yamcha found himself agreeing with Tenshinhan, but he had a bad feeling about what that said about him as a person.... 

Yamcha knew he wasn't a good man. He was a sniper for a yakuza syndicate. He was now a gun expert and had more than he could even really count. He knew he was a disappointment to his very religious, very peace-loving grandmother. But she had died a long time ago, and he had been orphaned and homeless for so long, and . . . this had been his out from that. 

He did not know Tenshinhan's story. He wasn't interested in it. But he knew that Tenshinhan was also not a good man. He was a killer, an assassin. They . . . all were. 

Though knowing Goku had killed even more people than he had, he had the hardest time thinking of Goku as bad. Even though Goku was just as brutal as Vegeta, who he knew had killed at least a hundred men before he was recruited (under very mysterious circumstances, no less, from what Yamcha had heard).... 

Still, this felt wrong, even though he was agreeing with it and kept a watchful eye on Piccolo from that point on. 

About a month later, the spying on Piccolo basically taught him that "manzana" was apple and that Piccolo really had it good. Literally all the boy did was babysit Gohan and listen to the boy reading and watching him play. Yamcha was a little jealous of it on days where he had had a really stressful day. 

It wasn't fair. It used to be that they had taken turns. But now this Latino kid was monopolizing the job. 

That was pretty much all Yamcha had to report when Tenshinhan asked him over sake at the lounge. 

"Hm... Well, there's just one thing we'll have to do now." 

"Huh? What do you mean?" 

Tenshinhan's smirk was rather sinister, and Yamcha wasn't one-hundred percent sure what they were up to until they were walking down the hall in the middle of the night. 

Tenshinhan knocked on Piccolo's bedroom door. It took a moment, but plenty of grumblings in Spanish later, Piccolo answered the door. 

"What is it?" he asked. 

"Chichi's asking for you," Tenshinhan said, unable to keep the smirk off his face. Yamcha had a feeling that would tip Piccolo off that they were lying. 

"She is? Why? It's midnight." 

"Oh, you know...." 

Tenshinhan trailed off, and Piccolo just gave him a very unamused look. 

Yamcha was starting to feel like Tenshinhan had made an inaccurate assumption about Piccolo. 

"I feel like she'd send one of her lady friends if she really needed something," Piccolo said and started to close the door. 

Tenshinhan threw his hand into the way of the door and forced it back open. Piccolo gritted his teeth, but Yamcha was suddenly struck by the fact that Piccolo really was just thirteen years old and was much physically weaker than Tenshinhan, who must've been in his late twenties or early thirties and had a long history of fighting and killing. 

"H-hey, wait a min-" but Yamcha was soon cut off. 

"C'mon, don't play dumb with me, _boy_ ," Tenshinhan said. 

Yamcha had a bad feeling. He wasn't sure he wanted to be here. 

"Let go! What're you talking about?!" 

"I've seen the way you look at Chichi," Tenshinhan said. 

Piccolo's facial expression showed he had _no_ idea what Tenshinhan was talking about. 

"What about her!? The hell are you on about!?" 

Piccolo was pushing himself against the door, but there was very little Piccolo could do against Tenshinhan's weight and strength. 

"Go away!" 

"You're waiting for the right time to make your move, aren't you, you dirty little - " 

"Tenshinhan - " 

But Yamcha's voice could barely have been considered urgent. Certainly nothing that would've stopped the man. 

Tenshinhan pushed his way into Piccolo's room, and Piccolo was thrown back, hitting the floor hard. 

Tenshinhan loomed over the boy and looked around the room. Yamcha took a few steps forward and looked inside. 

He had never really thought of the boy being religious, but it was clear that, while his religion was different from Yamcha's, the boy took it rather seriously. He was rather ignorant about Christianity and its different sects, but he somewhat recognized some of the iconography. 

He was at a loss as to what the skeleton in the robe was, but comparing it to the woman in the other pictures and tapestries, it must've been a lady skeleton. 

Tenshinhan acted without any resistance from Yamcha, and the resistance that Piccolo gave was easily thwarted. 

He broke the candles and tore the pictures down off the wall and ripped the tapestry to pieces. 

"NO! DON'T YOU HURT HER! STOP IT! _STOP_!" 

It happened in a matter of minutes. All of Piccolo's religious iconography was destroyed, and Piccolo dove for the fabric of the tapestry and the remains of the candles, cutting himself on the glass in his hurry. 

Tenshinhan's smirk was dark, and Yamcha felt like he was no less responsible for it. Though he continued to do nothing as Tenshinhan grabbed the boy by the ear and leaned down. 

"That's what you get for being a pervert to Chichi," Tenshinhan whispered harshly in the boy's ear. 

Piccolo's eyes flashed dangerously, and he glared at Tenshinhan and Yamcha. 

"You sure talk big and proud for a couple of _maricónes_!" 

They had no idea what that word meant, but it clearly meant something bad. 

"And what's that supposed to mean, _mán zi_?" 

Piccolo didn't bother to ask what the Chinese word was, and Yamcha kept a mental note to ask someone about it later. 

"It means you're one to talk when _you're_ the one _fucking Son Goku in the fundío_!" 

Tenshinhan struck Piccolo across the face, the boy's ear ripping out of Tenshinhan's grip. Piccolo hissed loudly, and Yamcha could see that Tenshinhan's nails had done a number on the boy's ear. 

"That's enough, Tenshinhan!" Yamcha finally said, starting to get really worried about how far Tenshinhan was willing to take this. 

Tenshinhan straightened up, then walked out of the bedroom, and Yamcha followed. Yamcha closed the bedroom door behind him. He pretended he couldn't hear the boy crying on the other side as they walked down the hall. 

Yamcha expected immediate backlash the next day, but Piccolo must not have tattled on them. Which . . . somehow didn't sit right with Yamcha. 

He didn't want to get into trouble with Goku. Or worse, have Goku be disappointed in him or angry with him. But . . . . 

Yamcha sighed, then took a deep breath. 

He found Goku in the lounge. The man was already having a drink, and it looked like something was bothering him. 

"Goku?" 

Goku turned his head to look at Yamcha. 

"Yeah?" 

"Can I . . . talk to you for a moment in private?" 

"Sure." 

They went into the back room, and Goku sat down on a big armchair. 

"Go ahead." 

". . . Tenshinhan did something wrong to the Mexican boy. And . . . I just stood there and watched." 

Goku stared at him for a while, then Yamcha continued. 

"He . . . he invaded his bedroom, destroyed the religious altar he had set up, then hit the boy, all while accusing him of impure intentions toward your wife.... I don't think the boy ever even thought of her that way. . . ." 

"I know," Goku said, his expression serious. 

Yamcha lifted his head a little. 

"Piccolo told Chichi what happened, and she told me. I said I'd handle it." 

Yamcha furrowed his eyebrows, confused. 

"I was waiting to see if either of you would be man enough to admit your wrongdoing." 

Goku smirked, though it wasn't a happy one. 

"I'm glad to see _one_ of you is." 

Yamcha took another deep breath. 

"I'll accept my punishment without complaint," Yamcha said. 

"I know you will," Goku said. "You and Tenshinhan are never to lay a hand on Piccolo ever again. Understand?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Good." 

Yamcha's screaming could be heard from outside the lounge. He had to wear an arm cast for almost two whole months afterwards. 

Tenshinhan ended up having his ribs broken. They took about just as long to heal as well, but were a bigger pain in the ass to deal with. 

Yamcha noticed that Piccolo had received wrapped gifts from Goku and Chichi about a week after Yamcha admitted to Goku what they had done. He acted like he couldn't see or hear them. 

"It took us a while to find a couple of them. They don't exactly have that Santa Muerte stuff in easily-found places." 

Yamcha could hear the unwrapping of the gifts and Piccolo's voice as it wavered with gratitude. 

"I wrapped it!" Gohan said. "And this way, you can still talk to your mommy!" 

"I can. Thank you. All of you." 

"De nada. ¿Como es Gohan en su lecciones?"

Goku knew Spanish. 

They never had to worry about Piccolo turning Gohan against Goku because Goku understood Spanish. 

Yamcha had never felt more stupid in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> The Spanish insult roughly translates to Piccolo calling both Yamcha and Tenshinhan "faggots" and Tenshinhan's insult translates to "foreign barbarian." Fundío is a Spanish word meaning "ass" and is used in Mexico and the Southwestern USA. I don't know about the regional specificity of the other two words. As someone who doesn't know either language all that well (eight years of being Spanish tutored, can read no higher than a 3rd grade level and did not have a lot of access to hearing Spanish profanity and absolutely no Chinese lessons), I cannot be certain if it's a proper intensity level for the situation, but I did my best.


End file.
